Posts tagged as:

Business

Confessions of a China Entrepreneur.

03.08.2010 Insights
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Today I’m going to give you a quick overview of my short experience as a China entrepreneur for reasons you’ll soon discover. So lets start with the end, and then we’ll work our way to the beginning.
Recently, I was honored to be invited and take part in UC Berkeley’s Asia Business Conference; I was a [...]

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Jinkela; Purposefully idiotic China ad creates massive viral success.

12.18.2009 JinKeLa
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I found this on LRB’s forum; it’s an ad for Jinkela, some sort of fertilizer. What’s crazy is the clownish way they went to advertise it; and the surprising reaction from millions of Chinese viewers.
Here’s an interesting question; let’s say you are an unrecognized brand, and you want to go “viral” to spread the word as quickly as [...]

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Associating “Volkswagen” with “Pee”.

12.14.2009 Print
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Ah yes; the holy grail of advertising is to somehow link your brand to urine. Wait; that doesn’t sound right…
I’m not sure what the thinking behind this one was; I guess they were able to check the “catch attention” box; but whether they got the “memorable brand message” is something else altogether; cause in this [...]

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LRB; One year old and hot as hell.

11.16.2009 News
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Hello all; I’m proud to report today that LRB is one year old.
It’s been an interesting year, beginning with the thought “why don’t I try to build a blog”, followed by “is anyone actually reading this blog”, then “you know what I don’t think anyone is reading this, so I’m just going to shoot my [...]

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Jobs; ZeroDegrees Seeks Digital Director.

10.23.2009 Jobs
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Hello all, we’re looking for a digital director over at ZD.The company is growing fast, and we need responsible managers that know how direct groups of 5-10 people, procure and QC  vendors, and have a general “jack-of-all-trades” mentality that allows a lot of flexibility in the digital space.
How much is the salary? Ya, that would [...]

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Isabelle; 12 Zodiac TVC Love Stories.

10.16.2009 Isabelle
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This is a beautiful series of different proposals made to 12 constellations crowned with the slogan “let’s get married”. The short clips are produced by Taiwanese, and so do we find the typical pure love story style as in many Taiwan TV series in these ads. Horoscope is very popular among young people these days [...]

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Zero Degrees makes a splash on Fast Company.

10.14.2009 News
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Zero Degrees hits the ‘big apple’ with a feature in Fast Company.
Navigating through China’s social media landscape can be a very daunting task. We created a local social media map to show the size of the various sites and it’s millions of members. Our good friends at Fastcompany.com recently posted the map on [...]

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Nokia; Transformers + Michael Jackson Viral.

09.23.2009 Nokia
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Here’s a pretty cool ad; it takes advantage of current pop trends to weave together a simple engaging experience.
A key element to note is that both the Transformers & Michael Jackson elements are western in origin, yet either separate or together, they have a big emotional impact on the average Nokia-targeted Chinese.
I like this ad; [...]

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Jobs; ZeroDegrees seeks “SNS Project Manager”.

09.22.2009 Jobs
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Hey all, we’re looking for a brave soul to join the ZeroDegrees team.
If you’re not looking for a job, feel free to stop reading, otherwise you’re in for a boring post. However, if you are looking for gainful employment, and want to throw in with fast-moving, risk-taking, entrepreneurial rockstars, growing a quickly expanding company in [...]

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Audi; Copycat Campaign, Awful Tagline.

09.21.2009 Audi
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Audi’s recent campaign is interesting, albeit a semi-copycat of an earlier 2008 VW campaign; it features a mud splattered into traditional Chinese painting on their off-road Q7. So ya ok; we can check the appropriate boxes:
1. There is a car in the ad? Check. 2. There is something off-roadish about the ad? Check. 3. There is something [...]

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Big Ideas vs. Small Ideas; Forest vs. Trees.

09.15.2009 Insights
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I recently spotted a great article on Razorfish’s blog titled: “Does SIM mean big ideas matter less?”.  I thought this was interesting until I realized the underlying duality of the question was inappropriate. Dualism, or “black vs. white” is never really the way to go; its always a compromise is it not? We may maintain [...]

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Where are the opportunities in China’s E-commerce landscape?

09.13.2009 Insights

How many of you shop on Taobao? If you’re Chinese I apologize for asking such a stupid question. How about this one: How many of you could name the top 5 E-Commerce sites in China? Now think. You have time so don’t hurry.
If you cannot name more than three you [...]

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Kingston; Targeting China’s IT Stoners.

09.13.2009 Kingston
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Here’s a good example of a “Lost in Translation” ad; likely either done by a local agency, or the brand’s localized marketing staff.The original message is: “Set your enthusiasm on fire”; followed by an English sentence that says “WE  are HIGH”… now there’s a line that has some stopping power.
Now I know this [...]

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Advertisers becoming more agressive, so what is the ideal relationship?

09.11.2009 Insights

It’s incredible the lengths advertisers are now going to capture the consumers attention. The digital space is becoming increasingly more aggressive and less tactful. Marketers are now oozing desperation; and with major portals crowded it’s a challenge for the ‘traditional thinkers’ to capture the consumers attention.
The result ‘KIDNAP’ the screen. It makes [...]

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Cartier; Social Media Campaign sans “Social”

08.27.2009 Haibao.cn
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I’ll start by saying this: Cartier’s China social media campaign is pretty disappointing. I’ll get into some more detail soon, but in an effort to save you time what you’ll see in this post is what NOT to do when launching a social media campaign; and what not to do when launching a website in [...]

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BMW’s flirt with the masses – Qzone ‘1′ series launch

08.17.2009 BMW
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When I first looked at reviewing this campaign I thought why would BMW be pushing their product through QQ? I mean sure, the numbers are just astronomical but how many QQ users can really afford to buy a BMW?
I’m certain they did their research and they were pushing the most affordable product across the [...]

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China Advertising Jobs and Bookstore on LRB.

08.13.2009 News
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Hey everyone – we just created a few new sections on LRB; one is a job forum area which we’ll fill with new China advertising jobs as we find them; we’re also teaming up with several headhunters that’ll drop their ads in from time to time – so check it out.
Also, we’ve created a bookstore [...]

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China Consumer Profile; “Young Digital Fashionistas”

12.18.2008 China Consumer Profile
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“Young Digital Fashionista” is a young Chinese girl with college education. She has an average yearly income of RMB 63,420 (USD 9,342), which is considered to be a high income in China; this allows her to “spoil” herself. She is IT savvy and fashionable. In her spare time, she frequently goes to the spa, gym, [...]

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